Defining Success

Curt has a whole series of posts dealing with how he's measuring success, and how his approach to success has changed:

* Career passion (of course)
* Financial abundance - having "enough"
* Time abundance
* Love
* Health
* Being present
* Meaning

From the post on time: "So in my definition of success, time abundance plays a key role. I want to have time to live the full scope of my life in 360 degrees, not just work."

Connecting the Dots

From a commencement speech by Steve Jobs:

"Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference."

I don't necessarily agree with all of this, but it is definitely true that it's basically impossible to connect the dots looking into your future. How much can we learn from the connected dots of others?

Consumers First?

Meet the gold-collar consumers -- "they're 18 to 25 years old, working at a poorly paid service job, living at home and buying $325 Christian Dior sunglasses". Apparently they've got Tastes for Glitz on Blue-Collar Pay.

The article quotes the author of Trading Up, which I still have in my bookshelf after reading the first couple of chapters last year. The basic premise is that we all find ways to buy luxury goods in specific niches that are important to us, but may sacrifice quality in other areas of our purchasing. For example, I have a mountain bike that's worth more than our car. It's a business book, so it focuses on how companies use that knowledge to leverage luxury products in all kinds of categories.

Aside from the obvious issues with tying our identities to what we buy, I'm interested in how this might affect how people envision their futures. A friend and I have been talking about software that could help people create views of their future lifestyles, where each activity (purchase, event, job, experience) is represented by a sort of value card. So I might select "mountain biking" and set my personal costs in time (four hours a week) and money ($20 a week), but more importantly select why I value it -- perhaps I mostly ride for its high social and emotional values, because I have a group of friends to ride with. The next person might choose the same activity, but value it mostly for the exercise and physical health benefits.

We had talked about the main categories of values being things like mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, etc...and we thought it would help people really think about how and why they value things. But how do you even try to quantify values for people who sponge off their parents and work at jobs they hate so they can afford overpriced shoes that make them feel like rock stars? Do we have to create a value selection for "pride" and "greed" and a housing option for "mooch"?

But perhaps that's the strength of a tool that helps people visualize how their values interact to create their lifestyle. If I create the shallowest, most consumeristic, energy-wasting, unrealistic vision of my future, then I will likely learn some things about myself and my perspective along the way. The "product" of an imagined future isn't actually as important as what you learn about what it is you really want, how you might make it work, and maybe even how it affects your community and the environment (even if you don't particularly value those effects?).

The theoretical underpinning of this stuff in reference to lifestylism is something like this: Most of our aspirations are borrowed in some vague way from the American Dream and societal assumptions like "you have to go to college to get a good job to make enough money for the big house". The process of envisioning what kind of lifestyle you really want will help expose some of the personal values, contradictions and trade-offs in a way that will constitute real learning -- instead of telling teenagers what they should do, or hoping they'll just absorb the goals everyone else assumes are ok, why not let them explore possible futures themselves and let them play with consequences first?

Global Lifestylism

Once in a while, I wonder about how China's One Child Policy has played out. What's it like to grow up with an entire generation that has no siblings? How about in the next generation with no aunts, uncles or cousins? Some of the trends and expectations for 20-something "singletons" in China sound familiar:

"Today, however, nearly all urban singletons stay in school. The result is nationwide diploma inflation; jobs that a young adult secured only ten years ago with a vocational degree, such as a bank teller, now require four years of college. This is confusing to young adults, says Fong, and it's not any easier on their parents."

Along those lines, it sounds like the lifestyle choices of young Europeans (having one or no kids) could be depopulating the continent in the next half-century.

Class Mobility and College Dropouts

Via George comes this interesting story about rising numbers of college dropouts. Even more fascinating in the context of this project were the links off to an interactive exploration of class mobility and the related poll results (pdf). Belief in class mobility is the underpinning of the American Dream, which I've been somewhat critical of because it is so vague. I think many of use the American Dream as a stand-in for our aspirations, but the nebulous belief gets oversimplified as "I need to make more money than I'm making now so I can afford the lifestyle I want", without reference to the values we really care about. This stuff is squarely in the middle of lifestylism.

Legacy Matters

My bloglines account is overflowing with good stuff I never seem to have time to reflect on here. I had a whole bunch piling up around the theme of recording our lives and sharing our current and past identities with those who care about us (and those that will care in the future, perhaps after we're gone).

I've been saving all kinds of gems from the Legacy Matters blog. I sometimes find it very grim to be confronted by constant issues of mortality, but the focus on deathstylism gives lifestylism a sharper edge. Jill talks about the scary implications of our imminent digital immortality, which could take all kinds of interesting (and mind-bending) forms. She also explores digital storytelling and the growth of scrapbooking, while drawing the parallel to Helen Barrett's work in e-portfolios, which overlaps with some of my own work interests.

I also like her advice about including digital assets in your will, which asks what should happen to all your online/digital writing, photos and e-mail once you've passed on. It made me realize how much of my life's artifacts are either out on the web, or saved on my work laptop...time to think about some better approach. Finally, this bit about the diaries of ordinary people talks about a movement in the UK from the 1940s where thousands of people kept notes about their day-to-day life. It's a treasure trove for their grandchildren and people who live in those places now, reminding me of a fascinating memoir project my mom is doing with a woman who grew up in England during that same era. Along similar lines, I've been enjoying the Blog of Henry David Thoreau, which provides glimpses into his daily life 150 years ago.

This marketing report on life caching is very business-oriented, but covers lots of the cool technology coming out for the purpose of recording and sharing our lives. It boggles the mind to think of how much personal digital content we're collecting -- just my blogs, photos and music are taking up gigabytes of space already.

Could this be your life?

I've often blathered about a vision for a sort of simulator for visualizing and "trying out" future lifestyles. It may become the focus of my masters thesis if I can buckle down. A career plan builder is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't really go far enough. Could This Be Your Life? is an interesting take on the concept. It's not exactly a rich experience, but yields some interesting results.

Collective Values and Styles of Living

I'm seeing how the Lifestylism tagline doesn't really encompass my vision for the concept. It's great that we're "creating the lives we want" by making choices that reflect our real values in a more holistic way, attempting to integrate our work, leisure, learning, spiritual needs, and relationships when we project our lives into the future. The potential gaps in this approach:

• makes the assumption that we have a clear sense of what we value in these areas
  
• assumes that when our choices are aligned with our values, the result of those choices will also be good for our communities and society as a whole
  
• implies that choices aligned with our values will actually yield "lives we want", when most of us tend to want way too much to begin with
  
• ignores the interconnectedness of our choices with the decisions and values of the people and organizations around us

These issues are ones I attempted (poorly) to articulate when I worried about lifestylism being inherently selfish. There's something in the collective values of communities and organizations that hasn't been covered here yet, but it's of vital importance. Lifestyles seem intensely personal, but communities and organizations also have values and styles of living that may or may not reflect their values very well.

What triggered these thoughts was an excellent article from Dave Pollard, who I read often, but haven't linked to yet. This one is a great introduction to his take on personal responsibility in the way we set up our lives: What I'm Doing to Help "Save the World".

Crunch Time

A great report on overwork in IT and the gaming industry: Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons. It's so good to see compelling arguments that show how crunch-time development is ineffective, expensive and demoralizing. This study is loaded with great quotes and links to all sorts of goodies on the topic.

I can't remember where I found this, but it was probably from one of the two work-related sites I've thankfully rediscovered: The Future of Work and The Work Less Institute of Technology, which also recently linked to the excellent well-being manifesto.

Don't Want to Be People

This lifestylism project often looks at work with an undercurrent of ambition, even when I might advocate an ambitious approach to minimizing how much time you spend working. I have no interest in being a manager or team leader in the company I work for, even though I have more seniority and experience...but I don't either want be on somebody else's "team" if the department needs a new layer of leadership. I just want to solve interesting problems and work with good people.

Another crossover from my work in educational technology is a philosopher named Stephen Downes. He recently started a blog to explore ideas outside of his professional interest and it's already full of gems. Here's his take on my conundrum:

"So now I work alone. On the bottom rung of the organization chart. I don't have people because I'm not willing to make that trade - to give up what's important to me in order to be given people. The flip side, of course, is that I don't want to be people either. It's not simply that I don't want to be the quarterback - I'm not willing to settle for being a linebacker either.

So was thinking about all this today as I read Fast Company and watched coverage of the Pope and listened to stories of the Gomrie enquiry and our aspirational Prime Minister and grumbled about the tightening grip of my employers, thinking about this and I asked myself, what changed? It wasn't so long ago that I wanted people - and while I haven't lost my ambition, my drive, my desire to make a difference, I don't want people any more. And it's not just the cost of getting people, it's more than that."

Check out the whole post for a great meditation on the concept of power.

Working Poor

I've sometimes been critical of this lifestylism concept because it seems so bourgeois. Do we all have the luxury of self-actualization? I found this CBC series on the working poor in Ottawa this week and it's another good reality check.

Circadian Madness

I know Brian Lamb from my "other life" in educational technology, but I enjoy all of his writing on all kinds of topics. This week he had a great post on the hard-driving folks who are willing to sacrifice sleep in an attempt to achieve work and life goals, and I heartily agree with his analyis: "A tyranny of the obsessed. If this sort of circadian madness is posited as a miracle cure to boost productivity, then we know our culture of work has gone off the rails."

More Living Without a Net

Jory is consistently putting out gems, with fabulous writing about her transition from employee to self-employed. Highlights for me from her last bunch: In Defense of the Free Agent and more reflecting on living without a net. The latter yields some great personal insights into the post-corporate lifestyle:

"I also took more time to walk to places, cafes, to the park in the middle of the day, to stimulate thought. I also didn't clockwatch until meal times. In fact, I've often been so engrossed in projects that I forget to eat (thank God, the b-friend likes to cook and reminds me). I suppose, in spite of the Grande addiction, my solo lifestyle is having a healthy effect on me.

I worried that becoming a solo would mean becoming a recluse, but that hasn't been the case. After a day of self-assigned and self-defined work, I feel satisfied at the end of the day, like I deserve to sit down with a friend and catch up. By month two of solohood I even considered myself deserving of meeting with other solo friends in the middle of the day. We didn't need to justify ourselves and convince each other that we would work for twice as long later that night. We knew that now that we were doing our unique brand of work, it would get done."

Remainders

Great post from Christopher about life's priorities and how we fit them into our days: A Person Divided Leaves a Remainder. There's a nice discussion going there too, and I encourage others to join in the fun.

Lifestyle Decoration

No, I don't consider home improvement to be an important part of lifestylism. In fact, I think people tend to obsess over meaningless details of their lives (like endlessly redecorating interior spaces) to distract themselves from the difficult work of aligning their lifestyle choices (how they spend time, money and energy) with their real values. That said, let's go into the wonderful world of paint for a moment.

Click on the Colour Game on this page for a personalized virtual painting experience. You do a series of little activities and answer questions that creates a sort of customized colour preference profile. You can then choose different colour schemes and see how they'd look in different rooms. It's less sophisticated and offers fewer options than the virtual decorator (Flash) they also offer, but it's still pretty neat. Anyone with a taste for these things could kill hours in there.

What fascinates me about this model is the idea of applying the same sort of simple immersive experience for life planning. Why not let a person do a series of little activities and answer some questions, then let them play with all kinds of variables in their future lifestyle? I love the concept. Just need to build it.